We'll see whether that changes now that Ashburn has admitted that he is, in fact, gay. Ashburn, whose sexuality came to light when he was arrested for driving drunk after allegedly leaving a gay bar, says he was just doing what his constituents wanted.

Of course, he's hardly the first anti-gay political figure to lead a hypocritical private life. Some, like Ashburn, have been compelled to make public admissions.  Others have denied it, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, sometimes even to their graves. What follows is Salon's slide-show look at some of the most famous anti-gay hypocrites of recent years.

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On Monday, Ashburn admitted to what everyone had pretty much figured out now.

"I'm gay," he said in a radio interview. "Those are the words that have been so difficult for me for so long." The Sacramento Bee's Capitol Alert blog reports that Ashburn explained that he voted the way he did on gay rights because he felt that's what the voters of his district wanted.

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It's a scene that could almost have been lifted from "God Says No," the first novel by James Hannaham, about a closeted black man trying to navigate the opposing forces of his faith and his desire. Protagonist Gary Gray grows up in the hell-and-brimstone black churches of Charleston, S.C., and marries a sweet Samoan woman from his Christian college in central Florida, but that's not enough to keep him from hungry grope-and-pokes in the Waffle House bathroom with anonymous men, followed by prayer on bended knee. As familiar as this setup might seem from a dozen shame-drenched political press conferences, Hannaham shifts the trajectory in an unpredictable story that zigzags from the Atlanta avant garde theater scene to a religious reparative therapy program called Resurrection Ministries, where men like Gary struggle to purge their sinful desires.

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Larry Craig's mug shot in "Outrage." Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

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Almost 30 years ago, during the political season of 1980 that would end with Ronald Reagan's landslide election, a congressional sex scandal briefly drove Reagan, sitting President Jimmy Carter and the American hostages in Tehran off the front page. Rep. Bob Bauman, R-Md., a rising star in conservative politics whom many saw as a future House speaker, was arrested for soliciting sex from a 16-year-old male prostitute. Bauman apologized to his wife and family, announced he was seeking treatment for alcoholism and unspecified personal problems, and disappeared into rehab without addressing any of the obvious questions arising from this arrest. He lost his seat to a little-known Democratic opponent in November, and made a short-lived effort to run again in 1982. That was the end of his political career.

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After his arrest in June of 2007, Craig pled guilty, paid a fine and clearly hoped the whole sordid mess would go away. When the story became public, he insisted that it was all a big misunderstanding, and, "deeply panicked," he’d been hasty in making the guilty plea.

Well, no dice, said the court. In the second rejection of such an attempt, Hennepin County District Judge Charles Porter called the original plea “accurate, voluntary and intelligent, and... supported by the evidence.”

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Foley was scheduled to appear on the "Today" show, but backed out, reportedly because Matt Lauer wouldn't be doing the interview. Instead, he spoke to the Associated Press and a Florida television station. (I'd embed the video of that interview, but it's set to autoplay -- you can watch it here.)

"I'm trying to find my way back," Foley told the AP. His attitude in the interview, though, probably won't help him accomplish that goal. He called his instant-message sessions with congressional pages a "momentary lapse of judgment," even though they went on for a period of months, and said, "There was never anywhere in those conversations where someone said, 'Stop,' or 'I'm not enjoying this,' or 'This is inappropriate' ... but again, I'm the adult here, I'm the congressman. The fact is I allowed it to happen. That's where my responsibility lies."

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Mahoney met the woman involved, Patricia Allen, during his 2006 campaign, and the affair reportedly began then. She volunteered on Mahoney's campaign and later got a job on his congressional staff in Florida -- her salary of $36,000 a year was paid for by taxpayer money. ABC reports that Allen was then moved to Mahoney's campaign staff "after complaints about the affair circulated in Washington."

When Allen learned that the married congressman was having other affairs, ABC says, she tried to break off their relationship, and told friends that Mahoney said the end of their relationship would also mean the end of her job.

The network has obtained a tape of a telephone call between the two in which Mahoney fired Allen. Here's part of their conversation, as reported by ABC:

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The AP's Brian Skoloff writes that Florida authorities were hindered in their investigation of Foley "because neither Foley nor the House would let investigators examine his congressional computers.

"In a letter to the [Florida Department of Law Enforcement] obtained by The Associated Press, House Deputy General Counsel Kerry Kircher wrote that because the data 'may contain legislative information that is constitutionally privileged ... and because Mr. Foley has not waived that privilege ... we cannot simply give you access.'"

House officials have said they did not find any sexually explicit images in Foley's e-mails, but not all of his messages were examined, and access to his hard drives would have been necessary for that.

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If the FMA is enacted, an amendment would be added to the U.S. Constitution that would read, in part:

Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman.

As my friend Steve Benen noted, the reintroduction of the amendment itself isn't that surprising. But the list of co-sponsors is. Out of the 10 senators sponsoring the bill, two names stand out -- Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and David Vitter, R-La. Craig, of course, is the man who became infamous for his arrest on charges that he tried to solicit another man for sex in an airport bathroom. Afterward, other men came forward to say they'd had sexual relations with him. As for Vitter, well, his number was in the D.C. Madam's call records, and at the time of that revelation he admitted to and apologized for what he described as a "very serious sin."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2008/06/27/fma/feed/ 16 http://www.salon.com/2007/12/03/craig_22/ http://www.salon.com/2007/12/03/craig_22/#comments Mon, 03 Dec 2007 13:51:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2007/12/03/craig As we noted Sunday, the Idaho Statesman is out with a new round of men who claim that they either have had sex with Republican Sen. Larry Craig or at least were at the receiving end of "unusual attention" from him.

Craig's office declined to comment for the Statesman's story -- the senator from Idaho has refused to respond to questions from reporters at Idaho's largest newspaper since August -- but his office subsequently issued a statement denying the new allegations.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/12/03/craig_22/feed/ 25 http://www.salon.com/2007/12/02/craig_21/ http://www.salon.com/2007/12/02/craig_21/#comments Sun, 02 Dec 2007 15:38:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2007/12/02/craig Just when it seemed that Larry Craig might succeed in fading back into the Senate scenery, the Idaho Statesman leads its Sunday edition with news of two more men who report having had sex with the Republican senator.

The Statesman says the two men -- plus several more who said they've been subject to propositions or "unusual attention" from Craig -- have come forward because they're offended by Craig's denial of his intentions in the Minnesota men's room incident and by his claims that he's "not gay."

Craig's office won't comment on the new allegations.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/12/02/craig_21/feed/ 55 http://www.salon.com/2007/10/16/craig_18/ http://www.salon.com/2007/10/16/craig_18/#comments Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2007/10/16/craig NBC airs Matt Lauer's interview with Larry Craig tonight, and we find this advance snippet just a little interesting, at least if it represents the entirety of the question that Lauer put to Craig:

Lauer: This particular bathroom in North Star Crossing is described as a hot spot for anonymous sexual encounters between gay men. And you had no idea of that?

Craig: Matt, you won't believe this. But I don't use the Internet. I don't have a computer at my desk. I've never used the Internet. It's just not what I do. I e-mail with my BlackBerry. No, I did not know that. I had no reason to know that.

Uh, Senator? Who said anything about the Internet?

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/10/16/craig_18/feed/ 25 http://www.salon.com/2007/10/15/crouch/ http://www.salon.com/2007/10/15/crouch/#comments Mon, 15 Oct 2007 11:45:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2007/10/15/crouch Headline in today's Washington Examiner: "Senate Republicans in defensive crouch over Larry Craig."

Craig returns to the Senate today, and the Examiner says Republicans are "groaning" at the prospect of having him around until the end of his term. Says one GOP aide: "Everyone just wants him to go away, and he won't. It's the most bizarre, awkward situation I've ever seen."

Over the weekend, Craig told an Idaho TV station that his lawyers will today file an appeal of the court order in which a Minnesota judge refused to let the senator withdraw his guilty plea in the airport men's room incident. Pushing back against those who think it's time for him to go, Craig snipped: "It is my right to do what I'm doing. I've already provided for Idaho certainty that Idaho needed -- I'm not running for re-election. I'm no longer in the way. I am pursuing my constitutional rights."

If Craig sounds a little bitter about the push he's getting from folks back in Idaho, it's nothing compared to what he has to say about Mitt Romney. Craig was Romney's campaign co-chair in Idaho until news of his arrest broke and Romney threw him out. Craig's take on Romney now: "He not only threw me under his campaign bus, he backed up and ran over me again."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/10/15/crouch/feed/ 19 http://www.salon.com/2007/10/08/rove_11/ http://www.salon.com/2007/10/08/rove_11/#comments Mon, 08 Oct 2007 11:43:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2007/10/08/rove The longshot: In the Washington Post's extraordinary look at those who've left the Bush administration -- by one account, "nearly everyone who has left the administration is angry in some way or another " -- Karl Rove says he wants to be known for something other than serving as Bush's "architect." "It's not like my life from here forward is going to be defined by it," Rove says. "I have a chance to create something else. I'm not just going to be typecast as, 'Oh, that's the Bush guy."

The contender: Robert Novak, who knows a thing or two about Rove's role as "the Bush guy," says that former Sen. George Allen is thinking about running for governor of Virginia. Allen, who lost a close race to Jim Webb in November after a campaign in which he called S.R. Sidarth "macaca," struggled with the revelation that he's got a Jewish heritage and stood accused of making frequent use of the "n-word," currently seems to be spending his time posting to a blog about his campaign travels and his football picks.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/10/08/rove_11/feed/ 13 http://www.salon.com/2007/10/05/censure/ http://www.salon.com/2007/10/05/censure/#comments Fri, 05 Oct 2007 19:38:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2007/10/05/censure In an interview for Bloomberg's "Political Capital With Al Hunt," Kansas Sen. and GOP presidential candidate Sam Brownback raises the possibility that the Senate will censure both bathroom-cruising Republican Sen. Larry Craig and prostitute-courting Republican Sen. David Vitter.

Brownback says the fact that Craig's crime is only a misdemeanor means it's unlikely that he'll be expelled from the Senate. But, he says, "if you look at what took place, you look and you go, 'This is not good; this is bad. This shouldn’t have taken place.'"

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/10/05/censure/feed/ 21 http://www.salon.com/2007/10/05/craig_17/ http://www.salon.com/2007/10/05/craig_17/#comments Fri, 05 Oct 2007 12:24:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2007/10/05/craig Appearing on the "Today" show this morning, Larry Craig's lawyer argued that the Senate Ethics Committee won't vote to expel Craig because the crime of which he has been convicted is just a misdemeanor and has "nothing to do with his official duties." Indeed, Stanley Brand suggested that the Ethics Committee might not even investigate Craig at all. "They have to cross that serious hurdle that I've spoken about, which is: Are they going to begin to take up misdemeanor cases as a matter of course?"

Republican Sen. Arlen Specter made much the same point Thursday. Saying Craig should be free to remain in the Senate, Specter said: "Disorderly conduct is not moral turpitude, and it is no basis for leaving the Senate."

But it's fair to note here that while Craig pleaded guilty only to the crime of "disorderly conduct," he was arrested because a cop in Minneapolis thought his actions were those of a man trying to solicit a sex act in an airport men's room. And it's also fair to note that Craig's arrest in Minneapolis came just a month after the Idaho Statesman confronted him with a tape-recorded statement from another man who claimed to have had sex with Craig in a men's room at Union Station in Washington.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/10/05/craig_17/feed/ 42 http://www.salon.com/2007/10/04/craig4_3/ http://www.salon.com/2007/10/04/craig4_3/#comments Thu, 04 Oct 2007 20:11:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2007/10/04/craig4 Sen. Larry Craig, who announced last month that he intended to resign Sept. 30, then said that he'd stay in office pending the legal proceedings he's initiated, now says that he's going to remain in the Senate until the end of his term in January 2009.

The latest statement from Craig, posted minutes ago on his Senate Web site, comes on the same day that a judge in Minnesota rejected Craig's request to withdraw his guilty plea in the Minneapolis airport men's room incident.

Craig says he's "extremely disappointed" by the judge's ruling because -- despite the fact that he pleaded guilty to them -- "I am innocent of the charges against me."

Craig says he's going to "continue to explore" his "additional legal options" and that he's going to "continue to serve Idaho in the United States Senate."

"As I continued to work for Idaho over the past three weeks here in the Senate, I have seen that it is possible for me to work here effectively," he says. "Over the course of my three terms in the Senate and five terms in the House, I have accumulated seniority and important committee assignments that are valuable to Idaho, not the least of which are my seats on the Appropriations Committee, the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Veterans' Affairs Committee. A replacement would be highly unlikely to obtain these posts."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/10/04/craig4_3/feed/ 33 http://www.salon.com/2007/10/04/craig3_4/ http://www.salon.com/2007/10/04/craig3_4/#comments Thu, 04 Oct 2007 17:53:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2007/10/04/craig3 A judge in Hennepin County, Minn., has just denied Sen. Larry Craig's motion to withdraw his guilty plea in the Minneapolis airport bathroom case. Rejecting arguments made by Craig's lawyers, Judge Charles Porter says the senator's plea was made voluntarily and intelligently and that the evidence -- the outside-the-stall loitering, the toe tapping, the hand swiping -- supports the plea Craig made.

Craig said last month that it was his intent to resign on Sept. 30, but he stayed on while awaiting Porter's ruling on his motion. No word yet on what he'll do now.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/10/04/craig3_4/feed/ 15 http://www.salon.com/2007/09/28/craig_16/ http://www.salon.com/2007/09/28/craig_16/#comments Fri, 28 Sep 2007 14:16:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2007/09/28/craig Remember how Idaho Sen. Larry Craig was going to resign from the Senate on Sept. 30? Then remember how he was maybe not going to resign if -- and only if -- he could get his guilty plea withdrawn by Sept. 30? And then remember how Craig put off his plan to resign because the judge hearing his case hasn't ruled yet?

Well, here's the latest from Craig's attorney. Appearing on "Hardball" Thursday night, lawyer Stanley Brand said that it's "conceivable" that Craig will remain in office through the end of his term, "especially if he gets some type of relief in Minnesota." "But," Brand added quickly, "I don't think it depends on that."

Translation: Craig may be sticking around even if the judge in Minneapolis doesn't let him withdraw his guilty plea.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/09/28/craig_16/feed/ 41 http://www.salon.com/2007/09/26/craig3_3/ http://www.salon.com/2007/09/26/craig3_3/#comments Wed, 26 Sep 2007 19:33:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2007/09/26/craig3 The Minneapolis judge who heard Sen. Larry Craig's request to withdraw his guilty plea on disorderly conduct charges today says he won't make a decision in the case for at least a week, throwing into question Craig's plan -- if it ever was a plan -- to resign Sunday.

As you'll recall, Craig went before the TV cameras in Boise on Sept. 1 to make what seemed like an announcement of his resignation in the wake of news that he'd pleaded guilty to a criminal charge arising out of his wide-stancing, toe-tapping, hand-swiping conduct in an airport men's room. But Craig, buoyed by words of support from Sen. Arlen Specter, chose his words carefully that day, saying only that it was his "intent to resign from the Senate" effective Sept. 30.

One aide to Craig subsequently said that the senator was keeping his options open and that he might not resign if he was able to get his guilty plea withdrawn before Sept. 30. Another aide said that Craig almost certainly would resign by Sept. 30. A Republican "source" now tells CNN that Craig wants to find some way to remain in the Senate and won't resign so long as the judge's ruling is still pending.

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